Amazon Ads Opens Targeting to Shoppers Who Buy at Rival Retailers
The Development
Amazon Ads now lets advertisers target display and video campaigns to Amazon shoppers who also buy at Walmart, Dollar General, Kroger, Walgreens, and Sephora, according to Adweek. The capability layers cross-retailer shopping behavior onto Amazon's existing audience data, so advertisers can reach users based on where else they spend, not only what they do on Amazon. The named retailers span mass, dollar, grocery, pharmacy, and beauty, covering the categories where Amazon has historically had the thinnest share of wallet. Amazon has not detailed the data sources or matching methodology behind the retailer signals.
Our Take
This is Amazon converting its scale into a measurement moat. Walmart Connect and Kroger Precision Marketing sell closed-loop proof within their own four walls; Amazon now claims visibility across all of them. The pitch to a CPG or beauty brand is simple: reach the Sephora loyalist or Kroger stockpiler without paying Sephora or Kroger for the privilege. The open question is signal quality. Amazon has not disclosed how retailer affiliation is inferred, and an inferred audience is not a verified one. Until that is clear, treat the targeting as promising but unproven. The strategic point stands regardless: retail media is moving from retailer-owned inventory to shopper-owned identity, and Amazon holds the broadest identity graph.
What Changed
Advertisers can now build audiences defined by competitor-retailer purchase behavior at the shopper level, inside Amazon's ad stack. Amazon's targeting moves from first-party on-platform signals to a cross-retailer view of the same household's spending, which no single competing retailer can currently replicate.
Marketing Impact
Retail media and shopper marketing teams gain a conquesting lever: reaching category buyers who currently split spend elsewhere. Media planners must rework incrementality testing, since overlap audiences blur the line between Amazon-attributed and cross-retailer lift. Brand teams in beauty, grocery, and pharmacy get a new competitive-share tactic.
Competitive Implication
Amazon gains structural advantage by monetizing cross-retailer behavior that rival retail media networks cannot see. Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, and Sephora's media arm become vulnerable because their shopper data now fuels a competitor's targeting, weakening their pitch that exclusive first-party data justifies premium ad pricing.
Strategic Outlook
Expect rival retail media networks to answer with data clean room partnerships and tighter restrictions on how brands export audiences. Amazon will likely extend the capability to more retailers in 2027. Brands will demand transparency on how signals are sourced, and that scrutiny will shape adoption.
The Exploit
Action Item
Retail media leads at CPG and beauty brands should run a matched-market test of Amazon's competitor-shopper audiences against current Amazon segments in Q1 2027, requiring Amazon to disclose signal sourcing before committing more than 10% of retail media budget.